Pekin, Holeman ready for wrestling competition

After a long three-week layoff, Pekin gets back into wrestling action with the Mid-Illini Conference tournament Saturday at Washington.

The meet can’t come soon enough for high-energy Dragon senior Joseph Holeman (29-4), who will be among the favorites to win the 145-pound title at the league meet.

Holeman, a winner of tournaments at Springfield and Lincoln this year, finds it hard to keep still when it comes to working on wrestling. In fact, he’s almost too dedicated according to Pekin coach John Jacobs.

“He’s one of those rare kids that just loves the sport and will go and do things above and beyond on his own,” Jacobs said. “Sometimes that effects what he does when he comes back to practice. He’s tired, or whatever, because he’s over-trained sometimes. That’s a good thing that somebody wants to go out and do extra.”

That extra includes sometimes getting up at 4:30 in the morning just to go for a run — something he has been doing even before he decided to concentrate solely on wrestling.

“That was his way of blowing off steam or getting rid of that energy that he has,” Jacobs said.

Holeman wrestles through the summer, qualifying twice for the junior national championships in Fargo, N.D.national tournament twice.

“He just really enjoys wrestling,” Jacobs said. “I didn’t want him to get too tired from over-training and wanted him to really peak at the right time here at the end. And I think he has the hunger, the conditioning, the drive is there. I look for him to do well this postseason.”

As for the three-week layoff, Jacobs said:

“It could be a positive where we could get healthy and go at a different pace as far as how we practice. If we had any injury bugs, they’d have time to heal. When you come down to the end (of the layoff) you start rallying a little bit and make sure their mind-set is the right way. For us, we’ve been able to enjoy that and do some things a little different, watch a motivational video instead of trying to hurry and fix everything we’ve done wrong.

I like to have something before (conference), but at the same time our kids have been competing with each other. At this point, we’re not going to be teaching them anything new. Now, it’s just a matter of being healthy and being conditioned.”